Civilians Ordered Out Of Rafah As IDF Ground Attack To Proceed
The last several hours have seen a significant escalation of the situation in the southern Gaza city of Rafah, sending Western diplomats scrambling and resulting in new threats and counterthreats between Hamas and Israeli leaders.
The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) have urged many thousands of Palestinian civilians to urgently evacuate ahead of an impending ground offensive. In the overnight hours Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant told US Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin that Israel now believes it has no choice but the carry on with the major ground operation, despite it having been stalled for months.
Gallant cited that a Hamas rocket attack was carried out from Rafah, killing four Israeli soldiers. Airstrikes in eastern Rafah have already begun, and residents and refugees there are being dropped flyers – and homes are also reportedly receiving urgent messages – telling them to evacuate immediately.
An expanded humanitarian zone is being set up by the IDF in the vicinity of the al-Mawasi and Khan Younis areas of southern Gaza.
“Driving through Rafah, the tension was palpable with people evacuating as rapidly as they could,” a British humanitarian health workers was cited by Al Jazeera as saying.
The IDF is calling this a “limited scope operation” – with army spokesman Lt. Col. Nadav Shoshani describing that for now 100,000 people were being ordered to move to the humanitarian zone. The army has further issued a map of the evacuation area and ‘safe zones’.
A military statement said that “in accordance with the approval of the political echelon, the IDF calls on the population, which is under the control of Hamas, to temporarily evacuate from the eastern neighborhoods of Rafah to the expanded humanitarian zone.”
“This matter will progress gradually, according to an ongoing assessment of the situation,” it added. “The IDF will continue to pursue Hamas everywhere in Gaza until all the hostages that they’re holding in captivity are back home.”
As for the tens of thousands of warning flyers currently being dropped, one reads: “Anyone found near (militant) organizations endangers themselves and their family members. For your safety, the (army) urges you to evacuate immediately to the expanded humanitarian area.”
And the flyers further stipulate: “It is prohibited to come near to the eastern and southern security fences.” Humanitarian aid organizations, including the UN and some Western governments have warned that an all-out assault on Rafah, which has swelled during the war to some 1.5 million people (mostly internally displaced refugees), will be a humanitarian catastrophe.
